Bc2000 (for the BCF2000 & BCR2000)

Fellow faderfolks,

My name is Theo, I run a middle class recording studio in Harderwijk,
the Netherlands.

A while ago I acquired a used BCF2000 and after it's been sitting on a
shelf for a few months I finally got around to connecting it this week.
But I'm running into trouble:

As soon as I connect a USB plug to the BCF2000 it seems to crash: it
looks like it's restarting and not starting up completely, instead it
gets stuck with only one led on the display or in the buttons near the
display, burning very bright. In that state the BCF will not respond to
anything, pushing buttons or whatever.

I've tried several things to get it working: 3 different computers (of
which one laptop), different USB cables, different USB ports,
pre-installing driver software, settting different USB modes, starting
the BCF up in different modes etc. but no luck so far.
Sometimes it seems to work for one second, computer makes a new hardware
found sound, but immediately after that, before windows gets a chance to
install a driver, I already hear the 'hardware unplugged' sound and the
BCF2000 gets stuck again.

I also noticed that sometimes it already crashes when I just hold the
shield of the usb connector against the metal of the usb port on the
BCF2000. I even noticed small sparks then, which would indicate a
different potential between computer ground and BCF2000 ground. The
computer is connected to a grounded outlet, the BCF2000 is a class 2
device so I can't ground it. Does this indicate the BCF2000 has a power
supply problem? The sparks seemed mostly gone when I reversed the AC
plug on the BCF2000. By the way, the crashes also happened when
connecting it to my laptop which is also a class 2 (not grounded)
device.

Eventually I gave up on the USB connection and connected the BCF to my 8
port midi interface (known good). That doesn't crash it, and when I use
Midi-OX (a great midi monitoring and translation tool) and I set the BCF
to standalone mode 3 I can see it sending some messages out on some
presets (P-5 mainly) when pushing buttons.
However, when I try to program one of the faders to send out a CC
change, exactly following the steps in the manual, it doesn't seem to
send out anything. Going to preset 5 and pushing the rightmost encoder
button does seem to send out some CC message, but it's not always the
same. I get the feeling that even though the leds etc. are consistent on
the BCF it sends out random or corrupted data.

Setting the standalone mode to 3 I noticed there is also an S4 mode
which is not described in the manual. Is this a new thing in firmware
1.10? What does it do?

The only bit of luck I had in getting the BCF2000 to do at least
something is starting it up in Mackie Control mode, and setting up Adobe
Audition (3.0) to receive mackie control messages.
That way, I can move faders in Audition's mixer, and the BCF faders move
along too if I move a fader on the screen using the mouse. But there
seems to be an unpleasant delay between moving a fader and
seeing/hearing the result and the faders move on screen and everything
seems to respond in little shocks. The computer should be keeping up,
it's a recent E6750 machine running XP with 2 GB of RAM and plenty disk
space, it runs everything else just fine and midi sequencing (using
Nuendo) doesn't give me any trouble too.

Does anyone here recognize any of this trouble or better, know of a
solution?
I feel the USB interface is simply broken but the former owner insists
that it worked for him, he knew the problem but got around it eventually
somehow (but didn't remember exactly how).

I could live with the MIDI connection instead of USB as long as it's
fast and reliable and everything responds as per the manual. Any
suggestions?

Does Behringer (or anyone in .nl) service the BCF2000 or will they
simply advise me to get a new one?

Any help, advice or idea on any of these problems and questions is
appreciated!

Regards,

Theo Fokkema
Rocktech.nl